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The Order of Newb Britannian Empire has a problem...

Well let me explain it to you shortly:
The Developer of Shroud of the Avatar thought it was a good idea to embrace deeds done by members of their game's community, by honoring them. Inspired by the knightly Order of the British Empire they invented the Order of New Britannian Empire.

While it sounds like a good idea on paper, you will soon realize why it might not be a good idea once it hits reality. But first let's read what it is all about en detail:

Recognition Programs

ONBE stands for Order of the New Britannian Empire. Both the ONBE and
Royal Warrants are rewards from Portalarium that are given out by Lord
British to community members or groups for their positive contributions.
They may include such actions as creating a valuable fansite, being an
upstanding guild leader, participating in the New Player initiative, or
being a volunteer moderator.
Candidates for the honor are normally chosen with the advice and consent
of the royal advisors, the Team Leads at Portalarium. There is one
recognized rank: Knight. Knights are awarded a badge and drape ribbon to
wear when appropriate. The badge is normally worn on the left chest.

To receive an ONBE or Royal Warrant, you must meet the following criteria at a minimum:

Active in a recognized program for at least 6 months

Is recognized publicly in a positive way by at least 10 other community members

Have no warnings or other infractions for at least 6 months

Have no suspensions or bans in the past year

Has never had the following infractions: death threat, sexual
misconduct, used game exploits, disrupted others from getting an award
because of jealousy or hate, or knowingly cheated another out of an
award

ONBEs and Royal Warrants may also be revoked if a player becomes
toxic in the community and goes against the foundation of what an ONBE
or RW stands for.

There are many other ways to be recognized as well! If you have any
questions on the internal policies we have for fair recognition of
players, please let us know.

Lord British and our team wants to hear from you! We want Shroud of the
Avatar to be a truly collaborative effort, so please share your ideas!
Sometimes great ideas are born in the most innocuous comment or
suggestion, so be sure to add your voice to the conversation.

Still sounds great, doesn't it?

It does! And it is. The rules seem fair and square - however once we talk about revoking the title, something that hasn't happened so far, it gets vague.

What can be deemed toxic? If we look at the Community Guidelines we see very clearly what is allowed and what not, and believe me I have been banned plenty of times for bending those.

But I always received a, from my point of view sometimes more - sometimes less justified, temporary ban or warning.

What is the problem with the ONBE program then?

It is easy. People are the problem. While most of the ONBE recipients live a quiet and happy life in SotA, some feel entitlement. So entitled that they start to think they are better, and think they can bend the rules to their bidding, because "Hey, I am ONBE.... I am a good guy, y'know!".What happens is, that Portalarium gets accused of favoritism... Unjustified?Most likely, but why has a ONBE never been revoked? At least publicly... But I could not find anything else that says otherwise...

A recent case of ONBE misconduct, I was able to observe myself:

As some might know our guild runs a quite popular shop in Owl's Head. We advertise it sometimes in the Nobles Chat, a global chat for High-Level-Backers.This sparked controversy as some felt the chat belonged to Role-players and shallow conversation only.

No clear rules were specified at that time, but that doesn't stop some ONBE guys to feel entitled to speak for Portalarium, it seems.

After reporting it to the community-manager Berek, who could not find any spamming of the chat (we used to advertise it once every hour) he told us that twice per day is no problem from now on.We abide to that rule, except when customers or players ask for items we currently have for sale - in that case we of course point them towards our vendor, if we got what they asked for. No sane person would count a conversation of giving directions to another player as spam... But apparently entitled ONBE players do.

I wouldn't give a flying fuck about them, really... if those people weren't highlighted as role-models representing the community!

I do not speak of all ONBE recipients, but those who disqualify need to lose that privilege.

As an example I post a screenshot of a dialog that happened after an ad post by Midian.

Please note that I edit all the names of the people violating the Community Guidelines to not violate them myself.

Interestingly the ONBE member who is the most vocal but is at least not name calling, is a repeated offender to the Community Guidelines, as sexual references are forbidden since the incident with the Blowjob Novel ;)

I am not posting the hypocrisy this ONBE shows when advertising his own events and POT repeatedly. That's totally fine in his opinion I guess ;) But hey ONBE has it's own rules it seems... You would immediately know who I am talking about, but rest assured I have the screens.

All those incidents above have been reported, and I hope they have consequences.It is funny to see how a forum mod even enters the discussion in the first picture, claiming he saw spam. As I stated earlier Berek told me I didn't spam it, and we never did. And he should know right? But hey let's accuse players of violations they never committed... publicly!It is the beginning of a community clique, which needs to be purged asap. Portalarium should warn those people as they are stepping out of line and give not only ONBE, but also Portalarium a bad name.

At least we can make sure they never see a PVP Area from the inside alive...

A few remarks:1) there are multiple definitions of spam, one of them is unsolicited commercial advertising, which is almost certainly what was referred to 2) yes, is *is* spam in that definition, as the OP only asked whether anyone from PP was on... So you replying was unnecessary, as you can not be certain whether they are, unless you have everyone from PP in your friends list. Furthermore the OP never said anything about wanting to buy anything, so dragging in the store by its hairs was indeed spam in the sense as defined above3) I do agree ONBE/RW has an issue, but that lies more with a certain small group of people abusing/cheating the system, not with the above, although the sexual innuendo was indeed uncalled for, in the above context it was clearly purely a sequence of naturally following remarks for comic relief...

Posting more than 2 times a day is now considered spam... see what dallases happyness studies generated. A community of endorsed militants.Happyness comes from freedom.. not artificially generated positive interactions.